THIS WEEKEND Showing
incredible longevity, The Help was
the most popular film in North America for the third weekend in a row beating
out a trio of new releases to top the long Friday-to-Monday Labor Day holiday
frame. The spy drama The Debt debuted
to impressive results in second place while the critically-panned thrillers
Apollo 18 and Shark
Night 3D followed with modest openings. Older adults came out
to multiplexes in larger numbers than teens as overall ticket sales were
about even with the holiday from the past two years.

Still pulling in ticket buyers in its fourth weekend, The
Help led the way with $19.9M over the long four-day span, according
to final studio figures, with the Friday-to-Sunday
portion actually seeing a slight uptick from last weekend. The Mississippi-set
drama became the first film since Inception
to rank number one for three weekends. Averaging a strong $6,993 over four
days, the Disney release boosted its stellar cume to $124.3M on its way
to what should be at least $160M. The Help
continues to benefit from solid buzz and audience expansion reaching people
now who had no interest on opening weekend. It has now surpassed Green
Lantern and is on course to outgross bigger summer action films
like X-Men: First Class and Super
8.

Leading the way among new titles was the older-skewing espionage thriller
The Debt which bowed to $12.9M over
the Friday-to-Monday period. The Focus release averaged a healthy $7,038
from only 1,826 locations as it played to a more sophisticated adult crowd.
Reviews were good for the Helen Mirren film and with its Wednesday start
the six-day gross was $14.8M. The performance was especially impressive
given how well The Help (with 1,000
extra theaters) continues to do with adult women and the fact that films
opening on Labor Day weekend rarely average more than $6,000 over four
days. A healthy run ahead for The Debt
could result.

The new outer space thriller Apollo 18
claimed third with a $10.7M debut from a very wide 3,328 theaters resulting
in an awful $3,217 four-day average. The Weinstein Co. release tried to
intrigue sci-fi audiences with its found-footage format but few turned
out. Those that did rejected what they saw as the CinemaScore grade came
in as a dismal D. Grosses will evaporate quickly. Luckily for the distributor,
Apollo carried a tiny $5M production
budget.

Fox's summer hit Rise of the Planet of the
Apes collected $10.3M raising the impressive sum to $162.6M.

Opening behind in fifth place was the fourth horror film in as many
weeks, Shark Night 3D with $10.1M.
Released by Relativity Media, the PG-13 pic averaged a weak $3,609 from
2,806 despite including 3D surcharges. It was the third fright flick in
a row that failed to break double digit millions on its Friday-to-Sunday
opening weekend following the $8.5M of Don't Be
Afraid of the Dark and the $7.7M of Fright
Night which was in 3D. Shark scared
up $8.4M over three days. Produced for roughly $25M, Shark
Night scored a disappointing C grade from CinemaScore. Females
made up 52% of the audience, 57% was under 25, and a very high 56% was
Latino. Although there were 300+ runs in 2D, Shark
Night truly pushed the extra dimensional thrills as a very high
86% of the sales came from 3D screens.

The Zoe Saldana revenge thriller Colombiana
dropped a reasonable amount in its second weekend to $9.6M pushing the
11 day total to $24.1M for Sony. With a four-day take that matched its
three-day debut, the raunchy comedy Our Idiot
Brother from The Weinstein Co. grossed $7M. The Paul Rudd pic
has taken in a modest $17.3M in 11 days. The distributor's Spy
Kids: All the Time in the World collected $6.8M in its third
round boosting the total to $31.2M.

Suffering the largest decline in the top ten was the horror entry Don't
Be Afraid of the Dark which fell to $6.4M over four days. FilmDistrict
has scared up $17.8M to date and the three-day decline was 39%. The
Smurfs took in $5.7M for a mighty $133.7M domestic haul. The
Sony smash continues to shine overseas with its international total rising
to $295.8M and the global gross hitting a sturdy $428M.

Opening with the top per-theater average of the weekend was the Bollywood
action film Bodyguard with $1.1M over
four days from 88 locations for a $11,945 average. The Reliance Big Pictures
release has grossed $1.4M since its Wednesday launch.

With the summer movie season just about over, sequels pulled in the
most business dominating the marketplace. The top five summer films were:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
($375.6M), Transformers: Dark of the Moon
($350.5M), The Hangover Part II ($254.4M),
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
($240.8M), and Fast Five ($209.8M)
which opened at the end of April but truly kicked off the busy moviegoing
season. The top non-sequels were - Thor
($181M), Captain America ($172.3M),
and Bridesmaids ($168.5M) which was
one of the biggest surprise smashes of the season. The
Help may eventually reach this same vicinity.

The top ten films grossed $99.4M which was up 6% from last year's four-day
holiday when The American opened in
the top spot with $16.7M; and up 3% from 2009's holiday when The
Final Destination stayed at number one with $15.3M.

Get earlier box office updates and analysis by following BoxOfficeGuru.com
on Twitter.
For a DVD review of Do Dooni Chaar
visit The Chief Report.

Be sure to check back on Thursday for a complete summary, including
projections, for next weekend when Contagion,
Warrior, and Bucky
Larson: Born to Be a Star all open.

This column is updated three times each week:
Thursday
(upcoming weekend's summary), Sunday
(post-weekend analysis with estimates), and Monday
night (actuals). Opinions expressed in this column are those solely of
the author.